Where I live, it all escalated very quickly. In just hours we were confined in our houses. People organized themselves in hours. I live near a big city. In the big city, in just a few hours there were lots of mutual aid networks that were starting. It was amazing how the people could react and organize mutual aid networks in such a short amount of time. I got inspired to do the same in my smaller city. That’s the first characteristic of the mutual aid groups: they have to have the capacity to organize a huge group of people in a short time (because most of the emergencies demand quick action). In big cities, they were capable of doing this easily. To do it in the country side is a lot more difficult, for one simple reason: in the big cities there are already social groups and organizations with experience in mutual aid and self-organization, so for them it was a matter of changing what they normally do to do mutual aid. In smaller cities, it is a lot more difficult, because there are less social groups and organizations, so there’s not much people with the aim to self-organizate. So that’s one of the things we must work on until the next big crisis: we have to create social movements in the smaller cities and towns so that when the crisis comes they already have the experience and the capacity to self-organizate. Because where I live there were no social organizations, so when we created the local mutual aid group, the volunteers didn’t really know how it worked, so it was more difficult for us, the people with experience, to teach them. In fact, a lot of the people who wanted to help had not formed any kind of critical thinking, so It was impossible for us to create an anarchist mutual aid group. I was the only anarchist there. So they decided to work along with the local government and the police, and I couldn’t really do anything about it if I didn’t want the mutual aid group to fail. Most people didn’t share my opinion that we had to organize without the aid of the government and the police. But that does not mean that mutual aid groups shall be formed only by anarchists: in fact, mutual aid is a matter that involves everyone, regardless of the ideology. We have to acknowledge that anarchism is a minoritarian ideology, so it would be an error to limit mutual aid groups only to anarchism and anarchy. Anarchists must be the core of those groups, but not only. It’s imperative to involve the maximum of people possible. That means that mutual aid groups will have different ideologies, perspectives, and ways to work. I believe that diversity can be a positive thing when applying mutual aid, because not everyone needs the same help and not everyone has the same capacities and working forms. The more people, the more diversity and the more organizational capacity, the better mutual aid groups work.
The mutual aid groups must be opened to everyone. There mustn’t be any kind of discrimination. Remember: the more people and the more diversity, the better.
Help must be provided to anyone that asks for it. It has to be assumed that whoever asks for help really needs it, so we mustn’t be suspicious of everyone. We have to assume that there will always be people who will try to take advantage of the situation and ask for help when they really don’t need it. But falling into mistrust and starting to make assumptions about who needs help and who is lying has a very high risk, as it breaks with the true reason for mutual support: to make everyone participate and get involved. Where I live, I have seen a couple of cases where people were mistrusting people asking for help. This seeded the idea that a lot of the work they were doing was useless, and put the network at risk. But the reality is that percentage-wise very few people really don’t need help: it’s just that a single person who takes advantage creates the perception that the other 99 who do need help are also being taken advantage of. This is very dangerous. It’s about building an environment based on mutual trust, not mistrust. However, it is true that in order to help as much as possible, you need to prioritize your efforts a little, and therefore perhaps prioritize who you need to help. But rarely will someone not get help: in my network, there was always enough organizational capacity and people to cover all the demands that came our way, so we could help everyone. Therefore, most of the time it will not be necessary to prioritize (which should be avoided at all costs).
Sometimes we met people who maybe didn’t need it. This is key to understanding the nature of mutual support: it is not just for people who need it, but for people who want it. It’s not charity, it’s a way of sharing things: sharing things not because you need them or don’t need them, but because it’s a lifestyle. Therefore, it is not sharing only with those who need it, but with everyone. Therefore, in principle, in a normal and ordinary situation, everyone should be helped, trusting that the people who ask for help themselves have sufficient judgment. Obviously, taking into account equity and prioritizing people who really need help. Once I read: ‘’why do I distribute food to everyone? Because it is about building a culture of abundance.’’. That defines to perfection what I am trying to say: if you give to everyone, then everyone will comprehend the importance of mutual aid. The problem with this society is that those who don’t need anything don’t feel like they have to build a society based on mutual aid. They think that they can build a society on egoism because egoism is enough for the one who has enough. So we must show them the opposite.
We have to be very careful about the State’s influence on mutual support networks. The State monopolizes care through Social Security, the Church, Carites, the Red Cross, and so many NGOs that do not want to correct structural inequalities but to put “patches”. The State is afraid that the power to practice cures will return to the people, as it knows that it is a very powerful weapon. In fact, it has managed to make the popular perception of solidarity and care fall directly on the State: people believe that protecting people and covering their needs must fall on the State. When he has problems, he immediately thinks of Social Security or institutionalized NGOs. This is a serious error: how are we supposed to build mutual support from the people themselves, if the people themselves do not have in their imagination the idea that it can be the people themselves who provide them with help? With this I am not saying that we should repudiate the very few tools that the state gives us to help us, but that we should manage not to depend on them as much as possible. We must ensure that people can turn to the community to solve their needs, and therefore untie care from the State. The healthcare monopoly is one of the main tools the State has to establish its supremacy. The State has managed to make our well-being dependent on the care it provides, and therefore we are afraid of destroying it for fear of running out of care. But if we eliminate this monopoly, we can destroy the State without fear. On the contrary, basing mutual support on the community is a success, since the community is resilient, and therefore always a Source of cures.
Mutual support networks must be organized in an anarchist way but with a libertarian ideology, understanding libertarian as that way of doing things that reproduces the mode of operation anarchists but who do not call themselves anarchists. We can’t convince everyone to be an anarchist but we can convince everyone to be libertarian. The practice of libertarianism will lead them to anarchism. We must take advantage of the agreement to publicize anarchist ideas, although the effective practice of mutual support must be prioritized over the spread of anarchist ideology. In other words, if in order to practice mutual support it is necessary to fall into some inconsistency with the anarchist ideology, then fall into it. First the practice of mutual support, and then the practice of anarchism. This was already theorized by Kropotkin: first the bread, then the revolution. First mutual support, and then the destruction of the State. We must bear in mind that, in today’s world, since the State has a monopoly on care, most of the time the practice of mutual support will be influenced or conditioned by the State. This can lead us to the contradiction that on many occasions, in order to apply mutual support, we will have to accept the oppression of the State. In a police society like the one that has been formed with the coronavirus, it is better to know when to confront the state and when not to, because if everyone is in jail or getting fines, then there is no mutual support possible . And if there is no mutual support, there can be no revolution. First you need to build a community, and then this community will be strong enough to destroy the State. But for now our reality is that the community is not strong enough, at least in my case. You cannot make the revolution without first having created the necessary mutual support mechanisms. Sometimes, therefore, it will be necessary to renounce direct opposition to the State and the police. ONLY SOMETIMES. EACH OCCASION SHOULD MEET THE MOST APPROPRIATE CRITERIA. A very clear example that happened to us. During the days of confinement, the police patrolled the municipality and issued fines to those who had gone out without justification. We were doing a legal activity, but we couldn’t prove it. The police stopped us once to ask what we were doing. The risk was a substantial fine, or being arrested. Facing them directly would have caused us to be arrested, and therefore we would not have been able to carry out our activity. On this occasion, we opted for a more collaborative solution: we explained what we were doing, and we reached an agreement according to which we had to pass a list of the members to the police so that they could move freely around the town. We must also consider that, in a situation of social and economic crisis like this, precariousness increases greatly, and this means that some sectors of the population cannot afford direct confrontations with the State at the risk of not being able to recover. And as I have already argued, mutual support must be extended to everyone, and more especially to these more precarious and vulnerable sectors. Therefore, it is necessary to consider, on some occasions, the most collaborative option, in order to allow them to participate. And if the collaborationist option is not chosen, then it is necessary to establish mechanisms of resistance to the possible oppression of the state so that these vulnerable sectors do not put their integrity at risk for the practice of mutual support in the framework of a police state. These mechanisms can be, for example, solidarity funds. The fact of collaborating with the State was, in our case, a strategic decision. In addition, there was also a phenomenon to take into account: as I have already argued, it is necessary to include people who are not strictly anarchists in mutual support networks (because anarchists are very much in the minority, and we need a large volume of people who practice mutual support). Many of these people will not be against the State and the police, and therefore they will be very prone to collaborative attitudes. Not cool, but it will happen. The summary of this paragraph could be: it is very important to avoid collaboration as much as possible and to move away from the monopoly of care by the State, but in extreme cases it will be necessary to collaborate to ensure the survival of mutual support networks. First mutual support, then revolution. Another example of collaboration that had to occur in our mutual support network was that in order for the police to leave us alone, we had to reach an agreement with the City Council. In our municipality, the City Council, Red Cross also organized solidarity and charity. They are institutionalized organizations, which represent the model of charity that we repudiate. But we had no recourse, and they did. Therefore we had to reach agreements with them so as not to step on each other’s feet, and even some sectors of the mutual support network considered it necessary to collaborate with them. In a way, it was a good idea, but we came to the agreement that in order to maximize solidarity and reach as many people as possible, it was best to distribute the work so as not to step on each other. It is also worth saying that the interest of the city council, of centers, was nil. We only received support from left-wing sectors, and especially from the radical left. Some of the members of the radical left party were in the mutual support network. There are anarchists who argue that it is positive to forge some alliances with the radical left sector in the City Council. In our case, it was useful, as it allowed us to have friends within the State, as a kind of entry. Now, just as the City Council didn’t bother us, it didn’t help us either. Institutions can’t be trusted either: they only really help when you’re a business.
Regarding the hierarchies that can be reproduced: there are many factors that can create hierarchies in a network of mutual support. Some of these factors are the same as those that generate hierarchies in other assemblies, but some are specific to mutual support networks. It is important to avoid hierarchies as much as possible. But sometimes, due to operational limitations, these hierarchies are formed. For example, in the case of our mutual support network, the hierarchy was formed around the founding person. Why was it formed? First, because most of the people who were part of it had normalized and accepted the hierarchy. Secondly, because in our mutual support network I worked mainly with pharmacies, which only had the phone number of one person (it was easier for pharmacies to organize themselves that way), so most of the activity of the mutual support network was linked to a single person, since she was the one who acted as the communicator. Usually that person was active and passed the information he received quickly, but concentrated too many responsibilities. It is important to avoid concentrating responsibilities on a single person, or on small groups of people, not only to avoid power roles, but to improve the functioning of the mutual support network. Our activity was limited by the activity of this person, even though the type of mutual support activities we did was the only way of functioning that we saw as viable. The more people have an active role, the less the activity will depend on a single person. As I have already said, it is about promoting that all people practice mutual support, and therefore concentrating the responsibilities on a single person is absurd.
The burden of practicing mutual support must fall on the whole community. We anarchists must learn to collaborate and work with people who do not have the same combative ideology as us. Only in this way can we gain sufficient strength to practice mutual support on a global scale. If we limit ourselves to moving in small anarchist groups, then our capacity for action is very low, we can reach very few people. The burden of the practice of mutual support must not rest on the anarchists alone, but on the whole community. In this regard, I saw a documentary by the Federación Anarquista de Gran Canaria (FAGC), which manages a large housing occupation project on the island of Gran Canaria, in Spain. The documentary is titled Precaristas: chronicle of the struggle for housing in Gran Canaria. The main thesis supported by the documentary is the following: we anarchists focus so much on the idea of fighting the State that we forget to practice mutual support. We are blinded by our anger against the institutions (anger, on the other hand, completely justified) and we forget to practice mutual support, and we forget the basic thing, which is conquer the bread. The documentary narrates how the FAGC was born as an anarchist project, but that when it focused more on the issue of housing, the anarchists left because they wanted to fight against the state, and that in the end whoever supported the project to be the people of the street who are not necessarily anarchists. And as a result, the FAGC currently manages, on an assembly and horizontal basis, an extensive network of squatter houses throughout the island that provide housing for thousands of people. If the anarchists had learned to work with these street people, who in the end are the ones who give strength to social movements, then the benefits and mutual support would have multiplied, and it could have had a more combative side.
All the previous argumentation tries to justify why the whole community needs to collaborate, and not just the anarchists, even if this can dilute the anarchist ideology. It should be pointed out that, obviously, when I say community I do not include fascists, sexists, racists, classists, or any similar morons.
The problem that opening up mutual support networks to all people can cause is the dilution of anarchist ideology. That’s what happened to us. But I don’t find it inherently bad: what matters is not the anarchist ideology, but the practice of libertarianism. What is needed is for people to act as an anarchists would, not to call themselves anarchists. And mutual support networks embrace all these libertarian elements, and therefore promote them. In this sense, it is possible to promote the practice of self-management and mutual support, and this is what really matters, and therefore we should not be afraid of the dilution of ideology among other ways of thinking. What should concern us is that practices contrary to mutual support or self-management are introduced.